


Fire Beneath the Stone

by mybelovedcheshire



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M, book!verse, i had poetic feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 11:26:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mybelovedcheshire/pseuds/mybelovedcheshire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras reflects on Grantaire's presence among the Amis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire Beneath the Stone

What use is a drunk to a statue?

The drunk has but one passion — and that is the drink that keeps him safe in his delusions. Safe, because no drunk enters the state of inebriation without cause, and Grantaire, in his nihilist fervour, had more cause than most.

He drank to the worthless world. He drank to self-indulgent causes, and wasted dreams, and the black expanse of time. He drank to love in all its sticky sweetness, and the fervour of lust, and thin dresses in the summer time. 

He drank to that cold, enervating stare. 

Enjolras didn’t blink. He dragged his eyes away from Grantaire when Grantaire tipped the bottle back, but never before. He had hoped once that something might be done for the drunk — that he could be convinced to put the bottle down. There was a world to be earned, to be fought for, and cultivated. There was a revolution to be had, and though a very large part of him loathed Grantaire, the rational side of his mind recognised the greatness of a potential ally. 

But in the darkness of his mind, he found it difficult to rationalise the convictionless wretch’s greatness with his empty heart.

Could any man who believed in nothing have purpose? Every cell in his body told him no. But the buzzing in his head — a sound that contradicted the evidence of his own eyes, and his beliefs, and the foundation of his world — told him yes. 

Grantaire accused him of being marble. 

Enjolras took a deep breath and looked to the window. A flag fluttered in the sweet, night breeze as it filled the back room of the café, teasing the candles. It played over his skin like the whispers of a new dawn in the twilight — soft, and slight, but certain. 

His life was bound to that certainty. 

His blood burned with it. 

Grantaire accused him of being cold — but the breeze reminded him that he was no such thing. The air felt like ice, because he was a breathing flame. 

In Grantaire, Enjolras discovered dichotomy. He learned of a world in which his absolutes not only existed side-by-side with their opposites, but thrived. One questioned, and the other answered, and so forth because without one another, he came to understand, the value of both became less. 

He was marble and he was fire.

Grantaire’s mind was rotten, but his tongue remained sharp.

The statue requires the drunk, and the drunk needs the statue. Without the statue, the drunk falls to the ground — helpless and lost, with no support. The statue stands aloft — haughty, and proud, but untouchable. He stands apart from the world — idolised, but useless.

Only the drunk would dare to touch the statue, because only the drunk lacks the awareness of the statue’s sacramental presence. He grips it tight, hanging off it, dripping on it, and rubbing away the flawless shine that makes the statue so ideal. 

The drunk lends a sense of humanity to the statue, that it would not otherwise have. 

Enjolras stood up. The others took no notice — they were absorbed in their conversations. Courfeyrac derailed Joly’s pitiful whine about cholera with a comment about pretty girls and sunshine. Jehan demanded a synonym for ‘sophism’ and Combeferre answered. In the corner, Bahorel and Grantaire playfully duelled with two legs of a chair broken by Bossuet. 

Every man there had his purpose — every single man. 

Enjolras crossed the room, heading for the door. Grantaire parried an attack by Bahorel and stepped back, watching him now while the others idly carried on. He opened his mouth to ask where Enjolras was going, but the young Jacobin placed his hand on Grantaire’s shoulder briefly as he walked past. 

Grantaire said nothing.

There was a fire in Enjolras’s touch that took even his dissident voice away.


End file.
